Google the other day quietly unveiled what is to be their in-house answer to Digg. Since they opted out of outright ourchase of Digg, (more than likely because they felt; rightly so, that they could do a better job anyway) there was much speculation about what Google would do. Well, here it is.

Kudos to Chris Lang for bringing “Google Reader Adds Friends List, Sharing, Bookmarking and Blog Recommendation Engine” to our attention.  In his post Chris goes into much detail as to how Google will be using this new capability, and what it may mean for those of us who use social bookmarking services, want to keep up with Google, or who merely want a sane alternative to the capricious whims of Digg.

Some of the more interesting items to me include the ability to add individual pages (posts) to your Google Reader, amd then share them with your friends, which you can now import from Gmail. They even provide you a sweet little bookmarklet to make the task ever so much more simple. It also appears that your Google Reader profile will take on more significance, and that Google may even use this to base rankings upon. More to come on that one. However, it is interesting to note that does follow links that appear in each shared post. It uses the permalink to the blog post and also links to the domain in each shared item.

Another tool for the toolbox!

~Keith

If you haven’t considered yet what your social bookmarking strategy is, or what it might be, or even if you need one, then here’s a few things to think about. A good social bookmarking strategy is essential on many levels, not the least of which is that if you do this wrong, you’ll find yourself locked up in the social bookmarking pokey in short order! (Don’t ask me what sites I’m banned from: wait for the T-shirt!)

Even the term “wrong” is relative, because each of the social bookmarking services is a bit different. What is cool at Mister Wong may be taboo at Digg, and vice versa. Certain subjects or topics are not in favor at certain sites, and you find this out the hard way sometimes. Anyhoo, here are a few things we’ve found that are usually not what you might consider a best practice:

• Promoting your own content - A big no-no on sites like Digg. Many of lesser elite sites don’t mind so much, but for the most part, you’re much better off letting your friends or network Digg, Stumble or otherwise discover your site.
• Multiple accounts - This is a tactic used by people who wear dark color hats! They register many accounts, use proxies, automated posters and other means to “game” the system. This one is against most all TOS of any of these sites.
• Duplicate content - Not in the sense you’re probably thinking. What I mean is the use of the same exact wording, headlines and text at every social bookmarking service you use. Mixing it up a little is at the very least a way of testing different headlines, anchor text and keywords. At best, it creates even more unique content with just a small tweak. 
• Frequency - Social bookmarking every single solitary post you make is not only not necessary, but can be looked upon askance. Bookmark your best stuff. What I like to do is rotate where I bookmark, kind of spreading the wealth, so to speak.
• IP addresses - If you do a lot of bookmarking for clients or friends, be aware that most of the bigger services, like Digg, monitor your IP adddress, and will come down hard on you of they suspect you’re trying to spam the system. Remember, moderation, and not your own stuff!
• Social Bookmarking AutoPosters - These software tools are an accident waiting to happen to your rankings.  A bunch of bookmarks with the same text, timestamp, and IP address all pointing to your site? Hmmmm….
• Google Slap Rumors - There are rumors rampant that Google may come down with one of it’s infamous “slaps” soon, this time targeting all the spam associated with social bookmarking sites. We shall see…

Those should give you plenty to obsess about over the next few days! Seriously though, a sane, well thought-out social bookmarking strategy can be implemented and should be. Just make sure you’re doing your level best to use the services the way they were intended to be used. The real winners when this all shakes out will be the people who’ve taken the time to create a following that will naturally bookmark and otherwise vote for their posts. This after all is the essence of the social web.

~Keith

Choosing the specific web properties you’d like to implement for your social media marketing strategy can be a confusing and time-munching matter. There are literally thousands of Web 2.0 sites out there, each purporting to be exactly what you need. So, as I said in a previous post, you need to be really clear about what it is exactly you’re after. Then you have a basis for choosing dance partners!

First, you need to be pretty plugged in if you’re doing this yourself. many times people come to social marketing thinking they’ll just get themselves a Facebook or MySpace account and everyone will simply rush right over after they see they’re there. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Just the fact you’re reading this is a great start, and there are many more voices that can shed light on the ever-changing landscape of social media. For me, I start my day by logging into my Google Reader and checking out the feeds of the various sources I listen to, and I have subscribed to a few! (You want to limit this to whatever number doesn’t keep you glued there all day!)

Now that you have an ongoing education in what’s hot and what’s not, you can begin to choose. Remember not only your goals and objectives, but what exactly will be the return for that investment? You can spend months building up thousands of friends and followers on some of the social networking sites, but if your goal is search engine traffic then you need to know that Google and others don’t give link credit from sites like Facebook, MySpace and others. So what is their value then? Their value lies in getting people excited enough about you that they’ll click through your profile to your website, where the fun can begin! And yes, you can gently massage them in that direction!

If your goals lie more in the direction of search engine rankings and traffic, you’ll be examining sites with a whole different set of eyes. You want sites that give live, followed links, that are very social, and that are getting lots of attention from the search powers that be. (Namely Google) These sites come and go all the time, but there are some that have lasted a while and are proving their worth to those who know how to use them, such as StumbleUpon, Digg, Tumblr and others.

There’s a lot to consider when choosing sites for your social media marketing arsenal; make sure you come to the table armed with all the knowledge you can!

Next time we’ll talk about the methods you use, and what you need to have done for you.

~Keith

You may have neard this last week of two items that came across our screens regarding Google, Yahoo and Digg.

The first of these was the announcement by Yahoo that it is contracting with Google to serve up contextual advertising on their sites, and will share in that revenue. Yahoo feels it can raise some serious cash by allowing Google to place their advertising next to Yahoo search results. The prevailing sentiments are that Google is far better at targeting this kind of search anyway, and it will be a win-win for both sides, as well as for advertisers and consumers. The deal still has to pass muster with government anti-trust types, so it may well be several months before we see any of this.

Also, Digg has apparently entered into some sort of arrangement with Google as well, possibly even the sale of Digg to Google. No one’s saying anything officially yet, but Digg would fit in nicely at Google, especially as how Google is trying to make inroads into the social marketing scene. These developments both bear watching!  

Let’s look at some of the pros and cons of outsourcing your social media marketing (or any tasks, for that matter!) versus the sometimes irresistible pull to do it all yourself.

I’ve done and do both, and there are several factors at play here. If you’re just a total control freak, then no one will meet your expectations, and you need to know that going in. There comes a time though, if you truly want to grow your business you need to consider outsourcing, or perhaps cloning! 

Outsourcing - The Pros

• You can instantly scale your business. You now have given yourself more time to do the things that are necessary to move your business to the next level because you’re no longer tied down doing the manual labor. Just because it’s on the internet doesn’t mean it’s not time-consuming, mind-warping work. Listen, if you had a landscaping business, you might start out doing some or all of the work, but the “green ceiling” would soon become very apparent! There is no difference online.
• It will dramatically improve the  speed of delivery on projects, as well as customer satisfaction. You’ll be exerting total strategic control of the projects, without having to physically do them. Your existing clients will be happier, and you’ll be able to take on more of them. 
• By outsourcing you’ll be able to take advantage of people who you hire that have an area of expertise or specialty that you may not have, thus improving the quality of your site or service.
• By sticking your head out of the rabbit hole, you will be meeting new people, some of whom may end up being a great ally or partner down the road. You just never know. (Well, sometimes you do!)
• Outsourcing will enable you to take tactical advantage of your competitors by not only increasing your own quality of service and amount of work you’re doing, but eventually your site will be outranking theirs due simply to the amount of content, links and attention that are being showered on it.

Cons Of Outsourcing

• Now and then the quality won’t meet your standards, and you’ll either have to reassign the task or fix it yourself. Sometimes this will cost you money. It’s the cost of freeing up your valuable time, (which I hope is more than you are paying your outsourcers!) As time goes on, however, this happens less frequently as your list of outsourcers grows larger and more dependable.
• You won’t have total control. This can be a hard thing to give up. It was for me. You know you can do it better, and you may very well be right! You just have to decide what’s more important to you; your time or your quest for perfection. 
• You actually have to pay people. In my mind this is a pro, but I know that many people have a problem with this initially. It’s actually sort of a right of passage for your business, as you’re now able to play with the big dogs. Don’t be stingy either! If you opt for the lowest price point out there, you will generally get the lowest quality and dependability. The highest prices may not be worth it it either. Decide on a number that will afford you the best quality and time value for investment and use this as a starting point, You can always add more later.

Social media marketing is a venture ripe for outsourcing, as the tasks of making social posts, blog posts, and creating content take up valuable time. Social marketing is also a vast and confusing landscape of sites and networks, and just keeping up with who’s who can be a challenge.  It’s a shifting playing field, with numerous player substitutions every day. Give this some thought before you start you next social media marketing campaign.